YES!!! Thank you for this, Walter. This post is so dead-on for me! I majored in French in college, with the hopes of becoming an interpreter at the U.N. (well that shit didn't work out for a myriad of reasons way too numerous to go into here), and I minored in Spanish. After moving to D.C. , trying & failing to become that interpreter for the State Dept., I decided to go into the Navy as a French linguist. That didn't work out either because all those billets were filled. So I had to choose another language -- I chose Russian.
It was a year of total immersion into the language and culture and I absolutely absorbed it with one of my roommates who was in the Army and also a Russian linguist. We ensconced ourselves in the language & the culture, going to San Francisco to hang out with our teachers and LEARN. As a result, I graduated a month early (because my oldest was born) and first in my class. I still have all the beautiful cards my Russian teachers brought me when he was born.
The husband was a Spanish linguist at the time & we had big problems getting stationed together. We ended up in Key West where there was only a little work for me, but plenty sea-duty for him. After a joint tour in Homestead, FL after that (still little work for me), I got out and he got orders to Panama. And off the family went!
That was the most beautiful experience of my life!! I was a civilian then and met a Panamanian teacher when I volunteered at the DODDS military high school. She lived around the corner from the base where we lived and we became great friends.
I used to go to her house and hang out, where everybody in the neighborhood used to. I got a chance to use and practice that Spanish minor EXACTLY as you described passing that kidney stone. But the neighborhood folk kept encouraging me, proud that I kept trying. Then, my brain clicked and I walked through that door into welcoming arms, and the butterfly landed and I never wanted to go back!
Not being immersed for a long time has left me lacking but, now that I'm in TX, I'm trying again because it is, in fact, a beautiful thing to enjoy that ride and be able to engage with so many people's language and lives. You're right -- they are the same. (Apologize for the long comment, but this one hit deeply!)